Today in APIs: Qualys Releases Security API

Qualys offers an API and constant monitoring tools to beef up its cloud security. Britain's Royal Mail posts an API. Plus: An innovative flat TV antenna group wins the Hack North Korea competition, and the banking industry warms to APIs.

Qualys, a cloud solutions and security company, has provided new tools for its Continuous Monitoring service. Its new API provides a series of automated alerts. The point is to put companies in a position to act proactively against threats rather than after the fact.

As Qualys CEO Philippe Courtot told Dan Kobialka of the MSPmentor, Continuous Monitoring will have a far-reaching impact:

Continuous Monitoring ​brings two critical elements — context and automated alerts that managed service providers (MSPs) can seamlessly integrate with their incident response center. As a result, MSPs can eliminate the large majority of the false alerts coming from [their] intrusion-detection and intrusion-prevention monitoring systems so they can take action on high-risk vulnerabilities before hackers can exploit them.

The API integrates alerts into incident response and monitoring systems with security information and event management platforms. It's designed to send the alerts to an email inbox using a Common Event Format. The overall impact is to move companies from needing to analyze events to receiving alerts they can respond to.

Britain's Royal Mail has announced that it has extended a service previously reserved for its largest customers to thousands more via an API. With Click and Collect, delivery of a package to a post office triggers an SMS alerting the customer that it is available for pickup. According to Logistics Manager:

The API gives retailers direct access to the details of all post offices, before labeling and shipping the parcel through the Royal Mail parcel despatch management tool they use. It also enables online retailers to integrate the service into their website and checkout processes for shoppers to select a post office convenient to them.

One point is perhaps particularly surprising to American readers, who are watching the U.S. Postal Service relentlessly scale back services by closing some post offices and reducing hours and personnel in others. In Britain, the postal service is expanding, and the API was added to make Click and Collect easier because, get this, post offices are open for longer and longer hours, making it possible to give patrons more flexibility in picking up packages. This is in response to customers' demands. Now that's something to write home about.